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You are already very stretched and I know your own project has also attracted its share of criticism because you are not simply uploading everything to a website for the whole world to download."
Well If we start to think about that thing...a day we can really do it but...It will be good for the community? Why can't share it as Dave Park thought about it?
"I would not recommend anyone working on organising the folders etc until it is clear exactly what format the massive archive needs to be in to be uploaded to archive.org. I fear they want every title separated out and submitted individually - with over 1400 individual titles, that is a huge job."
Well for me It will be better preserve first MDV original format, than the IMG/DSK/QDOS original format (disk) and than the cracked version that run on a Folder.
"Could you return my microdrive cartridges to me (including the 300+ which came from the USA) and I will try to find time to start putting together sets of manuals / boxes and microdrive cartridges for the physical side of the preservation."
These mostly on responge went with destroyed tapes and sincerely I don't thought to return it to you as broken because It cost me more than 200£ to responge (and 130€ for shipping it from USA to ITALY with the courier) and try to dump it all, but I usually collect BK md's after dump and I can send you a lot of these (50/100 or more, If necessary mostly all in a few months).
You have access to our stuff (or I can let you access again If Max have changed some folder / rules), I can share that dumps to you too (are marked as Dave Park stuff).
I remember that you want that I create a Bandersnatch (really not final version) on a MD and send it to a people that send you the broken MD's (that were mine too before): If you want I can do it in the next few weeks and ship it directly to him but It will be really better tu use the MDV image on the emulator: on a real QL the recreated MDV can't work due the protection. The 2 MD's that send me were absolutely unusable (try to responge it again but were destroyed too, tape was too tight at all).
Let me know what you prefer that i do.
About the preservation project: I suggest to assume a different way of thought in the future and open all possible channels: I think we can't really stop this software become public a day (in a way or in another).
Fortunatelly we have no free time now to think about it but I ask you all to find a solution for let people get and use this stuff that is 30 years old and I think commercially can't be solded for many years to come.
When I put something on eBay (doubles boxes/bk md's) is just for recover part of the costs (sometime I spend more than 1000€ at month for the preservation) and not for make money.
I hope the peolpe undestand that make a work like we are doing (for multiple machines) is not just only a question of time but mostly a question of money
Fortunately I've my personal business company and with his advantages (shipment costs reduces. sometime no vat, etc...) but the work behind the scenes is massive and very very strong.
I'm very sad to know that no one is working on your preserved stuff but we will do it for sure in the next years: when we will still near to the end we will try to list all on a Website but...we really can't publish mostly all we have preserved.
I'm very sad about this situation.
A very big hug from Italy.